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| NASA/Swift/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith and John Jones |
For the first time ever, scientists have measured the corkscrew nature of a bright flash of light emitted from a dying star collapsing into a black hole. The new findings shed light on an event that happened almost 11 billion years ago.
In this case, the researchers spied Gamma-ray Burst 121024A, a bright flash of light emitted by the dying star. Because the burst was so powerful, the astronomers were able to clearly see it at an extraordinary distance. Yet this burst was unusual; it was circularly polarized.
